Margaret Wente missing the mark

Don’t get me wrong, I like Margaret Wente, and one bad column isn’t going to change that.

But the biggest problem in the so-called “war on reproductive rights” is not Republicans but the media.

There’s some of this column I agree with. There’s a lot I disagree with. But in areas where I haven’t followed closely, or am not sure, you can be sure I’m not trusting Margaret Wente or most any other mainstream media source.

Why? Because Wente clearly thinks that abortion is part of “women’s rights.” For starters, any journalist can and should ask what “reproductive rights” are. And why they include abortion. But no journalist ever does that, because most of them drank the Kool-Aid.

Who knows whether these laws Wente mentions are sound or not. I’m likely to say no, but that would be because my approach to the life issue is more grassroots/cultural.

But any media commentator who shows such disrespect for the idea that abortion is not part of women’s rights, and who fails to note that more women than men are pro-life, or who fails to not only notice but respect the sizable proportion of pro-life women, particularly Republican women (as concerns this column) certainly isn’t going to get my trust for attempting to learn about the other issues.

Ah, Toronto, my hometown. Land where views contrary to those of the Toronto Life ed board make you a “knuckle dragger.” So glad I got out of Dodge. (And now I’m not sure I’ve used that phrase correctly, but it’s what came to mind, so I’ll leave it stand.)

Sad to see Margaret Wente present the standard liberal meme where typically she offers a fresh perspective.

Comments

I think you have hit the nail on the head: the biggest problem with the column is the underlying assumption that abortion is a ‘right’ – and isn’t calling abortion a ‘reproductive right’ the worst of ironies?

But I’d be curious to hear more of your views on the broader debate in the US right now. We all know the GOP is pro-life and abortion will always be an issue for the party, but why are they getting into the contraception issue? Is her point that a lack of access to birth control increases the likelihood that some women might resort to an abortion evidenced in the research?

I will have to read up more, for sure, but my thoughts so far are that the GOP is getting into the contraception issue because of the new Obama healthcare mandate, which forces private, religious entities to violate their religious beliefs and conscience. If the Democrats were looking for a leader right now, they might very well debate the same religious freedom question. It’s legitimately very hard for many to understand why the Catholic Church is against the Pill, but they simply are and it’s not up to government to change that. So I think this is where the media distortion begins: those who are against the Pill didn’t go out looking to pick a fight, in my opinion, they had their backs pushed up against the wall, but it’s the Republicans who are in their primaries right now and forced to grapple with it publicly.

From there, the pro-abortion media translate this into a Republican obsession with birth control.

I don’t think there is consistent evidence in the research that access to the Pill decreases abortion. For sure, it is one of those hotly contested areas of research. But even without looking into official research, this notion defies logic for me, since widespread Pill use coincides with the legalization of abortion, at which point abortion rates went up. What are your thoughts on this?

The mandate put forward by Obama not only forces all Catholic institutions to pay for birth control, but it also includes abortifacients, morning-after pill, and abortion for those who face unwanted pregnancies. It is the trouncing of religious freedom that is really at debate here.
I loved when Newt Gingrich turned the tables on the CNN moderator in a debate when he said “why are you going after the Republicans on this issue and calling us extreme when you never once questioned Obama on his support for not saving the lives of babies who survived abortions? that is the real extreme position.”
It is Obama who has brought this contraception issue out into public debate. As Andrea says, the Catholic Church did not go looking for this debate, but Obama has thrust it upon the Church.

The GOP is more likely to be anti-contraception than the Democrats, but the issue for the GOP, I think, is freedom of religion, not contraception. For the Democrats, the issue is primarily getting Obama re-elected, and they think they can do that by using contraception as a way to make the bishops and at least some of the GOP candidates look silly.

There’s no way for me to see this issue except as a deliberate attempt to divide the Catholic voters. Contraception is only a key religious issue for the Catholic church, and Catholic women use contraception at approximately the same rate as non-Catholic women. Obama deliberately picked something that would affect primarily the Catholic electorate and that (he thought) would look ridiculous to most people.

The idea, I think, was to make sure the Catholics that voted for him last time would still vote for him in November. He doesn’t care about the Catholics who actually follow the teaching of the Church, because he doesn’t think they were the ones who voted for him, and he probably also thinks they are an extremist minority. I think he wanted to do something to encourage “normal” Catholics to vote for him, and not to pay attention to the fact that our insurance rates are already going up, in preparation for the mandate taking effect.

Obama, at least in his own mind, probably does not consider himself to be anti-Catholic. He just doesn’t consider the bishops and the people who follow them as “normal” Catholics.

The reason I think it was deliberate was because the whole thing was completely unnecessary. They had to *change* the normal way of doing business, that has been followed by both Reps and Dems since Roe vs Wade, allowing a religious exemption on these issues. If they really cared about getting contraceptives to employed women (the unemployed are already covered in other ways), they would have done this differently or waited until he was re-elected.

So no, I’m sure it has nothing to do with contraception on either side of the aisle, although the Democrats are going to continue to play that card because that’s one they can win.

It has had two interesting side effects, though, that I didn’t expect.

First: It did actually unite all the American bishops (and I mean *all* – would that they had done that in the time of Roe vs Wade). This is certainly not anything I’ve seen before in the Catholic Church in my lifetime.

Second: There’s actually been some coverage of the problem with hormonal contraceptives at least. People in general don’t seem to have automatically gone with the “opposing contraception is laughable” idea. I mean, that is a dominant theme, but there have actually been articles on the problems with contraception in general, and the medical and carcinogenic problems with hormonal contraception in particular.

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